Facebook was founded 2004, three years after POTN. Twitter was started 2006. Instagram was founded 2010. Snapchat 2011. Discord 2015, Tik Tok 2016. All those multi-billion dollar companies have conquered the market, created the social media as we know it, intentionally aiming to addict by algorithms, put people into own bubbles, track you to target ads, lose content validity in short time so that new content gets created constantly. Some of them reduce message lengths thus directing young people to short attention span and think less about complete sentences. Photos are shared via social media apps, Whatsapp and cloud services. This trend has sped up in last few years, and AI will change it all again. Soon people won't have to write or create anything - it's all done for them.

Sad truth is that there is no place for conventional forums any more with the recent generations. Traffic is down. Enthusiasm is down. Mood is down. Discussion is down.

There are many old timer members who keep posting, but that does not sustain the site. New members appear, but they do not post much, just browse and like here and there. That is the reality. When everyone had only computers (PC or Mac), writing was much faster and easier - now tapping seems to be the main communication method.

Google delivers fewer and fewer ads in forums (most ad slots are empty, meaning we don't have even a chance to get anything), so for a long time I've had to pay most of the server costs from my own pocket, even with some occasional donations which I appreciate.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1530921

Thing is - they made wrong extrapolation

But problem is that social networks are not stable platforms, far from it.

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

None of them have their users in mind other than to rip them and throw out.

Hence people need to have places where they don't have various shits calling them or trying to push corporate agendas.